Two young optometrists from Specsavers have been recognised for responding to ocular emergencies and, in doing so, saving patients’ sight.

Lisa Ogi and Shray Kamath (pictured) received Specsavers’ annual Dame Mary Perkins Award for Outstanding Patient Care at the Specsavers Clinical Conference, held on the Gold Coast in September. Named for the Specsavers co-founder, the award recognises acts of outstanding patient care that have a positive impact on patients’ lives, no matter how big or small.

Specsavers received 170 nominations for the 2026 award. Nominations were anonymised and judged by a panel of industry leaders, comprising Graham Perrett, chair of Vision 2020 Australia and former member of the Australian House of Representatives; Mark Nevin, CEO of Optometry Australia; and Dr Justin Mora, who sits on the board of Eye Health Aotearoa, is a member of the New Zealand National Eye Health Clinical Network and is also chair of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Ophthalmologists (RANZCO) Māori and Pasifika Eye Health Committee.

A PAEDIATRIC EMERGENCY

Mr Kamath, who practises at Specsavers Lower Hutt in NZ, was six months into his career when a patient presented in 2025 with a retinal detachment. The patient was just 11 years old and had a three-day history of sudden vision loss in his left eye.

While the initial presentation “seemed more like conjunctivitis”, examination told a different story.

“Upon examination, I found a superior exudative retinal detachment in his left eye… you could see it on the very edge of the OCT (optical coherence tomography), and when you looked to 90°, you could see that the whole superior retina had sort of detached and it was about to come off at the macula. So [it was] very, very close. I couldn’t believe it,” he explained.

In managing this patient, Mr Kamath was faced with several challenges: an urgent need for treatment, a language barrier, and a lack of patient transport and funding.

His first call was to the registrar at Wellington Hospital, who was taken by surprise. “He actually made me clarify [the presentation], I think three or four times… I still remember [him saying] that he had never seen an incident of retinal detachment in someone that young.

“They told me to tell the patient they would probably need to operate straight away.”

While the young patient spoke a little English, his mother spoke none.

“I was communicating with the 11-year-old, and he was translating for both of us.

“I had to keep my communication quite simple… to make sure that there wasn’t any sort of mistranslation or misunderstanding because he was still quite young… But I still wanted to get across the point that it was an emergency, he needed treatment straight away.”

Having discovered that the boy’s mother wasn’t able to drive and didn’t have the financial means to get to Wellington Hospital, Mr Kamath personally arranged for an Uber.

While the young patient has now recovered, Mr Kamath said that as his first paediatric emergency, the case had impressed on him the gravity of his role.

“I think it’s just allowed me to get a great appreciation that on any given day with any patient, we could expect anything. So you’ve got to have an open mind… and just don’t jump to conclusions.

“I had to very much think on my feet because I wanted to help preserve that kid’s vision. That’s the rest of his life.”

THE OTHER END OF LIFE’S JOURNEY

For Lisa Ogi from Specsavers Runaway Bay in Queensland, it was an only-eye patient at the other end of life’s journey who presented with an emergency.

“I had a 90-year-old patient, referred by his GP because he had sudden loss of vision. The GP thought it might’ve been a retinal detachment but once I assessed his vision, I realised how dire it was. This patient was already blind in one eye from a complicated surgery, and… the good eye was now count-fingers vision.”

Despite being virtually blind, the patient, who lived alone, had driven to his GP and on to the practice.

“I had a look at the back of the eye and immediately I could see it was a submacular haemorrhage, which made the need to have him seen even more urgent.”

While the first call would typically have been to the emergency department, the patient refused to be seen in a public hospital, so Ms Ogi called local ophthalmologists. The practice she found with availability was 45 minutes by car, on the second level of a building, and the ophthalmologist – Dr Lewis Lam – needed to see him within the hour.

Instructing the patient not to drive, she booked him a taxi and asked the driver for help. “I explained the situation. I said, ‘The practice is on the second level. Do you mind just helping him get into the lift, make sure he gets into the right place?’”

While Ms Ogi’s role could have concluded at that moment, it did not. Following up with the patient after his treatment, she discovered that with anti-VEGF injections he had recovered to 6/60 vision but was no longer able to drive and, with no local support, struggled with basics like grocery shopping.

“I said, ‘If you come to Runaway Bay, I have a 30-minute lunch break. I’ll take you grocery shopping anytime’. And I offered him five times.”

Each offer was refused and Ms Ogi said he eventually told her he was OK. “He said, ‘I just go up to someone in the aisle… they’re always happy to help me’.”

However, Ms Ogi and Dr Lam were able to help him access a taxi subsidy scheme and put him in touch with Vision Australia.

“After that, he wanted to chat about his options because he thought maybe his vision would get better than it had. [By talking about the disease process] I could reassure him that the injections were helping… his condition was improving even if his vision wasn’t feeling like it was.”

More recently, when treatment costs and travel became barriers, Ms Ogi was able to convince her patient to accept a referral for treatment at the hospital.

While honoured to have been recognised with the Dame Mary Perkins Award, Ms Ogi said preserving some of her patient’s sight had been a “group effort”.

“On the day of the first eye test, we were running behind so the clinic coordinator could otherwise have told him to come back – and it would have been too late by then. But she recognised that this was an urgent case and brought it to me. The ophthalmology practice that did end up taking him was about to close. If they hadn’t seen him, then his prognosis would’ve been much worse.”

400TH SPECSAVERS STORE

In other news from Specsavers, the company has announced the opening of its 400th Australian store. The new practice is in Hamilton in regional Victoria. Specsavers said the opening “reflects Specsavers’ ongoing focus on supporting regional and remote communities, where accessing healthcare services can sometimes be more challenging”.